Alec Baldwin: Hollywood Liberal

Alec Baldwin's career may have seen better days but his political opinions are as strong as ever.

In such films as Fun with Dick and Jane, The Aviator, Elizabethtown, and The Cooler, Alec Baldwin has perfected the role of the ugly American capitalist. Each of these roles are rich business owners who care more for money than people. Baldwin is a noted Liberal and no doubts loves to play these types of roles as he gets to portray rich capitalist as bad and as evil as he wants. In a stab at the current administration, Baldwin’s character in Fun with Dick and Jane is a Texan who is shown hunting while giving lip service about how upset he is that the people who use to work for him are out of a job.

A quick visit to alecbaldwin.com (Baldwin’s authorized web site) finds articles about him that quote his opinion on the state of our countries politics.

“Hat’s off to Schwarzenegger for what he did,” he says, candidly stunned that the action star won the California Gubernatorial recall election, but then adds: “They pulled it off perfectly in that cynical, Machiavellian way…” he told Steve Dollar from Newsday.

Baldwin’s opinion on the Bush administration is summed up in this quote he gave Aaron Gellt of “W” Magazine, “And the crowd that’s in (the White House) now are the worst ever. These people are thieves.”

Baldwin made the A-list in The Hunt for Red October but rumours that he demanded script changes and more money to do the sequels cost him the role. Harrison Ford was hired instead for the following two sequels. He also made headlines for awhile with his romance, marriage and divorce from Kim Bassinger.

Now fully off the A-list, Baldwin has been busy acting in small roles in such forgettable films as Thomas The Train, Pearl Harbor and Cat in the Hat. His Academy Award nomination for The Cooler did little to elevate him back to his earlier stature. Instead Baldwin is as famous for his Liberal outspokeness as he is his acting.

During the Gore/Bush campaigns, his then wife Bassinger made the statement that Alec “might have to leave the country if Bush is elected President.” He didn’t. Baldwin himself has made so many political and environmental statements that he earned the nickname of “Blovinator.”

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have taken particularly harsh shots at Baldwin. He and his brothers were upset when the animated film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut showed the Baldwin brothers get bombed and killed. In Team America: World Police a puppet Baldwin is shown to be the stooge of Communist Dictator Kim Jong-il.

Baldwin has stated that people hate him for his political opinions. Maybe it is more about how he expresses his opinions. On Brian Whitman's radio show, Alec Baldwin called, conservative talk show host, Sean Hannity a "no-talent former construction worker hack", "a no-talent ignorant fool from Long Island," and "an incredibly ignorant boob." In return, Hannity called Baldwin a "gutless coward" and "a third-rate Hollywood egomaniac."

Baldwin is certainly free to voice his opinions but so is everyone else. Perhaps his best political statements are when he plays all of those rich American business men as heartless capitalists. After all, those words were written by someone else. He gets to promote a stereotype without having to take the blame for it.